{"id":14326,"date":"2015-03-25T16:00:03","date_gmt":"2015-03-25T16:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nccdh-dev.media-doc.ca\/seasons-of-wellness-2\/"},"modified":"2025-10-01T19:24:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T19:24:12","slug":"seasons-of-wellness-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nccdh-dev.media-doc.ca\/fr\/seasons-of-wellness-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Seasons of Wellness"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tCommunity engagement is a promising practice<\/a> that cuts across strategies to reduce social and health inequities.  Northern Health in British Columbia undertook a community engagement process with northern Aboriginal communities of building relationships and working collaboratively to address issues stemming from marginalization and colonization to achieve a common goal of improving health for their people. <\/p>\n

\n\tJulie Kerr (Past Director, Population Health) and her colleagues in Population Health started by worked closely with the Executive Director of Aboriginal Health<\/a> to be culturally appropriate in service planning and delivery.<\/p>\n

\n\tThrough this partnership, it became clear to Julie and her team that it is essential to recognize, acknowledge and respect cultural values, norms and historical experiences when engaging members of the Aboriginal community.  Part of this was about building trust and waiting to be invited to participate in planning, development and implementation of health services in their Aboriginal communities.<\/p>\n

\n\tOnce trust was established, the community partners fully engaged in the process of identifying their own health needs and priorities.  Although the initial plan was to work with each community individually, many of the same issues were raised in each community.  In the end they all agreed to work together to develop a “calendar and toolkit” that would stay in the communities and outlive the health care providers who frequently come and go.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Seasons of Wellness<\/em> project was born and together the community and health partners developed a culturally sensitive health promotion toolkit organized around a seasonal calendar.  The toolkit includes posters, brochures and a calendar template that are culturally appropriate and include images and messages from the specific communities in which they are used.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Seasons of Wellness<\/em> project was centered on the belief that community partners come with a wealth of knowledge and provide tremendous value.  According to Kerr, the success of the Seasons of Wellness<\/em> project can be credited to a number of factors, including:<\/p>\n